Pleasant Vices by Judy Astley

landmine, or frostbite from guiding Ranulph Fiennes across Antarctica, but the truth tends to come out.’ David Robbins stirred his tea thoughtfully and looked at Jenny. ‘Wife went off after that. We’re in the last stage of divorcing now. At first she made jokes about me being permanently legless, but it was all a front. I think there was someone else anyway.’
    â€˜You live round here, do you?’ Jenny asked tentatively, nervous that she might come across him some time in the Waitrose car park.
    â€˜Cardiff. But no-one fits limbs like they do at Roehampton. They made my new feet. I feel like Douglas Bader. Now and then I come up for a spot of adjustment, and for this sort of thing. Suits me right now not to look for anyone long-term.’ He gave her a shyish grin and Jenny could feel a blush. She wanted to ask him why he thought he had to pay for sex, but was afraid to cross over from the safety of small talk. There was a silence, broken only by the busy sounds outside of Carol and her workmen, scrabbling busily about with ladders and hammers.
    â€˜You haven’t done this before have you?’ David Robbins said softly. He was looking slightly past Jenny to where her flute was in its usual place in the conservatory. ‘But you know what it’s all about. It’s not music.’
    â€˜No, it’s not music,’ Jenny agreed, knowing this was the moment to explain the mistake.
    In the end it was quite easy. It wasn’t music, and Sue had been right, it was much more profitable. Jenny had forgotten how exhilarating feeling truly, secretly wicked could be. In plenty of time to collect Polly from school and rush her on to a ballet class, she spent twenty minutes in the shower washing away any lingering feelings of guilt, counted her money and stashed it, together with the rest of the citrus-flavoured condoms, in a rhinestoned evening bag at the back of her underwear drawer. Must remember for next time, she thought, towelling her wet hair, the lime flavour isn’t up to much.

Chapter Six
    Jenny spent several days hugging her shameful secret to herself, hardly daring to leave the house in case she blurted it out to someone in the street. She felt that if she allowed herself out, let loose in public, she would be sure to be accosted by someone doing a survey, and would confess, when asked, her new occupation. ‘I fellate strange men for money,’ she could hear herself announcing loudly to a bored student with a clipboard trying to sell insurance in a crowded shopping precinct. To keep herself under some sort of control she stayed home and fed the family on long-stored, unlabelled casseroles from the freezer, and when the cat food ran out she extravagantly opened a can of best dolphin-friendly tuna for the delighted Biggles.
    From the safety of her window she watched Paul Mathieson looking proudly up at the Neighbourhood Watch sign on the street lamp outside his house, and gleefully she thought, here’s one crime you haven’t spotted yet, right under your nose. How ecstatically horrified Carol would be, too. A few months ago she had walked down the Close with them as Jenny was taking Polly to one of her disco classes (‘Make-up already at your age dear?’ Carol had commented, eyeing Polly’s dazzlingly lurid lycra outfit set off by Barbie-pink lipstick) when a teenager from the estate had crossed the road in front of them wheeling frothily-frilled twins in an absolute Rolls-Royce of a pram. ‘Three guesses how she paid for that,’ she had sniffed, shocking Jenny.
    â€˜Can’t guess, you’ll have to tell me!’ Polly had piped up, earning one of Carol’s Looks.
    â€˜Her mother, hire purchase, or borrowed?’ Jenny had suggested, refusing to play.
    Jenny expected a suitable feeling of guilt to creep up on her in time, as she imagined it should, but every time it threatened, she thought of Alan and how effortlessly he was